Time Doesn't Wait

As much as I try to hold onto the past, time doesn't allow me to cling to it. I want to wind back time to last year before Willie started having problems walking. That's how I want to remember him; not as an invalid.

I still shed tears for him. After all, it's only been two weeks this Thursday. Tomorrow, I should get a call to pick up Willie's ashes. I've cleared space on my dresser for his lacquered box with a brass nameplate. (Boy, was that hard to do -- the clerk asking me about these arrangements on the day he gets put down. I could barely answer her.) His urn will take its place next to the ones I have for Kitty and Sumi. They got plain pine boxes with no nameplates. I'll have to do something about that. (I wonder if we should memorialize Noel in some way, too, even if we do not have anything concrete to put in a box for her. We still wish we knew what happened to her; whether or not she's still alive.)

So, all I have to remember Willie by are snapshots, his purring recorded digitally, and bits of fur I snipped from him at the last moment. I am so afraid I'll forget him.

I'd rather hold him again for real: smell his fur, stroke his paws, rub his belly, and kiss that sweet head of his as he purrs. God, how I miss him!